Hong Kong government boosts new home target by 40% to 19,200 a year

Is the market happy with this?

Chief Executive C Y Leung continued to focus on housing, economic development and competitiveness in his third policy address.

According to a release from Colliers, Leung has set out a new home target of 480,000 public and private units by 2025, up by 10,000 units from his Policy Address in 2014.

With 40% of those being private homes, this gives an estimate of 19,200 new flats per annum. Leung also addressed the need to ensure the provision of land supply for housing developments.

Here's more from Colliers:

New supply in the private housing market is expected to average at 19,200 units per year over the next decade.

Although all these figures show an improvement on the annual supply of about 11,500 units over the past ten years (2005-2014), it is still much lower than the long term average of about 28,000 units per year between 1980 and 2004.

We understand the government finds it hard to secure enough land for residential developments to meet the supply goal.

In reality, the government has not been able to add any large scale sites to its land reserve. Although, some of the 150 sites zoned for government, institutions or community purposes or for green belts, as well as farmland, may be converted into residential use, only 45 housing sites have been given planning permissions.

The market has no idea on the number of units generating from the 150 sites.